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Perfume: How to Buy It

One of the biggest errors that many people make when buying their first lot of perfume (along with buying it in Aldi) is assuming that the smell eminating from the bottle will be the same as the one that it gives off when sprayed on your skin. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. See, everyone has their own unique scent (and if you don’t believe us, give granddad a sniff over Christmas), and when perfumes are sprayed onto their skin, these smells will combine with them to present another, entirely different scent.

A good way (well alright, a slightly weird but effective way) of looking at this is to think of the fragrances you get from cooking. You might love the smell of garlic (trust us, run with the comparison), but will you love it as much as if you mix it up with beetroot? Not that we’re saying you smell of garlic, but the point is this: just because a smell is nice on it’s own, doesn’t mean that it’ll still be nice when mixed with something different!

What’s the point of all this garlic talk? That you should always, always try a perfume out on your skin before you go and buy it. Spray a little bit onto your wrists – not your neck, unless you’re a contortionist - then walk out of the shop (put the bottle back on the shelves first, obviously). Ten minutes or so later, sniff said area. If you’re not bowled over with horror, you’re doing well. Hopefully, your skin will have mixed nicely with the perfume, and you’ll be all ready to get out and make the skies blue and the birds chirp (or at the very least pull the fittie from HR).

One of the beauties of shopping for perfume is that unlike many areas of fashion (hello, prom dress), it doesn’t really matter what the brand is. As long as it makes you smell lovely, a bottle of Sainsbury’s own brand is as good as a tiny designer vial that requires you to remortgage the house. As long as you don’t focus solely on price with your shopping, you’ll end up smelling absolutely marvellous: Store value kidney beans are a sound way to save money, but store value perfume will scare off everyone, even the weird guy on your bus who lives ‘only to serve the possums’.

Hopefully these tips will help you choose between the myriad of different perfumes available from any retailer. Needless to say, chase the hell out of any bargains (that rule never goes out of style), but remember: spray onto skin before the shopping bag it goes in.

Jonnie B. Allen - About Author:Jonnie B. Allen is writing articles for SemiSchem. The Semichem offers a great selection of fashionable and affordable beauty products, ranging from fragrances and cosmetics to skin, Perfume, designer fragrances and hair care.